[Buddha-l] The mess at Bodh Gaya

[Richard Hayes]

On Thu, 2008-02-07 at 08:47 -0500, Dan Lusthaus wrote:

> Muslims built mosques over holy sites wherever they went (Central Asia,
> India, Middle East, North Africa, Europe, etc.), or took over the sites and
> dubbed them Muslim henceforth (Ka'aba perhaps the most famous example).

One of the many things that makes Andalusia so fascinating to visit is
the architectural rape of holy places. Several beautiful mosques were
pointedly turned into Catholic churches during the reign of Ferdinand
and Isabella. Most of these were originally built as mosques. I'm sure a
number of synagogues must have undergone similar forced conversion, just
as their human occupants had done.

The Zen Buddhist Temple of which I was a member in Toronto was a
building that had been built as a synagogue, then sold to Seventh Day
Adventists, then sold to the Buddhist community. As far as I know, none
of these takeovers were violent (except through the violence inherent in
all attempts by human beings to own things). The Korean Zen master made
a few feeble attempts to interpret the Star of David that was built into
the floor as a Zen symbol (just as ignorant outsiders made feeble
attempts to interpret the Buddhist swastikas as Nazi symbols). Religious
rape occurs in many forms.

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico